


a new language

by threadoflife



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Addiction, First Kiss, Fluff, In multiple ways..., M/M, Mental Health Issues, Sometime after s4 but unspecified
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-09
Updated: 2017-03-09
Packaged: 2018-10-01 13:00:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10190435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/threadoflife/pseuds/threadoflife
Summary: The greater the suffering, the greater the rewards.The first time John kissed him, something happened inside Sherlock.





	

The greater the suffering, the greater the rewards.

Eventually.

Sherlock had always thought those particular phrasings were a load of bullshit, crudely put. Neurodivergence was not something you thought of in terms of deserving and rewards if you wished to survive. In this battlefield of chemical imbalances, there was hardly time to philosophise: the next manic or depressive episode or unfounded overreaction was already waiting around the corner, and all that was left to you was–if you were lucky enough and enough self-control and rationality remained–the decision of coping mechanisms: healthy or unhealthy ones, this time?

It was a question you were posed only after about a decade of fighting, however. Everyone starts out with unhealthy coping mechanisms.

‘Fighting’… such a euphemistic expression for the much blander reality of suffering and enduring, certainly. 

Sherlock supposed it was only human, cloaking crudities in unnecessarily florid or metaphorical language. It was ‘perspective,’ probably. Positive psychology. Why Sherlock still had that concept saved on his hard drive, he hardly knew. He was full of vices, these days.

One of these vices included: the greater the suffering, the greater the rewards.

To his defence–it was not entirely dependent on just him, the fact that this one phrasing might have some truth to itself after all. Guilty was only John: John, who held Sherlock’s face in between his small, capable hands; whose lips against Sherlock’s own–moving in a repetitive, contradictory gentle firmness–coaxed a certain sense of euphoria out of Sherlock, not unsimilar to the euphoria his violin granted him at times. There was no sense to this, no explanation, just basic human drives: sweat and skin. A kiss. Just a kiss, that’s all this was.

Sherlock did not think he would howl if he never had this again. He did not think he would wither away in some sudden bout of self-destruction if John left. He did not think this would eventually be dangerous to him, or fatal.

Of couse, he had believed the same when he first started using cocaine.

It all came back to addiction: Sherlock was naturally attracted to addictive things, the obsessive and single-minded streak inside of him making it hard to… _balance_ things, as it were. It had always been ‘all or nothing’ with him, and kissing John now proved he was no different: he wanted to cut himself open so he could take John up inside him. ‘Consume’ was probably an adequate word. 

The thought made him tilt his head–his mouth open, lips parting, pressing forward harder, sliding his tongue inside to taste John, more of John. _Slick_. Warm. A bit rough, but–good. Very–very good, illogically so. Tongue against tongue: why was this so intense? Why did it make his knees soften? Why did it make his legs want to bend in?

John gave as good as he got–gave more than he got, clearly, after a minute or two of this. His hand slid from around Sherlock’s jaw to the back of his head, where he let his fingers splay apart to cup his skull, as if it housed something precious, not a self-destructive machine that could go off any minute. Sherlock did not think of himself as precious–as genius, yes, as exceptional, as special in some ways, but ultimately expendable. Precious things were rare things: things that were exceptional and special not because they were uncommon but because they were incomparable, irreplacable. Sherlock was replacable.

John, though, John kissed him, and Sherlock felt this was untrue. Sherlock felt that in this moment, with John on and over and around him, that he was irreplacable. It was a strange, odd sensation that opened up something inside Sherlock’s gut he had not known was locked away. It spread like wildfire, engulfed his organs and flooded his veins and overwhelmed his brain: he needed this, this new, raw sensation. 

It was warm. It was safe–a safety that did not make Sherlock want to run away. A safety like his cloak, only softer, without defences, because there need not be any defences here. It was a safety like John: steady, reliable, deep, and true, surrounded by a warmth that made Sherlock think of naked skin between soft sheets on a high.

It was a safety that roused Sherlock’s instincts.

John’s fingers tangled in his hair; they tightened; they tugged–just the barest bit, they tugged.

John sucked on Sherlock’s tongue, inside Sherlock’s mouth, which was slack and wet.

Sherlock’s knees softened; his legs bent in; they trembled, then buckled, and backw–

John caught him. There was no lurching backwards, just John’s hand in Sherlock’s hair, the other arm sudden and tight around Sherlock’s waist, and John caught him. 

Sherlock, overwhelmed, blinked. Breathed shallowly, rapidly; stared; clutched at John with trembling hands around John’s shoulders; blinked.

“Easy there,” John murmured, petting a hand down Sherlock’s nape. “I’ve got you.”

 _Got me how? Got me where? Got me why?_ Sherlock’s mind was a tempest of conflicting emotions. His body, oddly enough, _ached_. There was a hollowness to his bones he could find no logical explanation for now; his body strained, his skin drawn tight, and it made _no sense.  
_

He was barely standing up. His hands, he realised belatedly, had relocated to John’s jumper, at which they were tugging, relentlessly, impatiently–upwards, upwards, the fabric out of the waistband, away, gone, need it gone–

His eyes, he realised belatedly, were stuck on John’s kiss-swollen, red lips. Much redder than before. Thicker, too–as if stung, bee-stung. They looked sweet, if lips could look sweet. 

Each of those illogical, sense-refuting thoughts made Sherlock’s breath come faster.

“I’ve got you,” John murmured again, and closing in he–

_got me how, where, got me why–? what are you–_

–kissed Sherlock, and all fell silent.

It was desire, Sherlock would soon come to understand. It was desire, and love, but he was incapable of understanding now, caught in sensation as he was. Hot and tight and whole it washed over him, and his last clear thought for a while was: if he needed to suffer to ever feel like this again, he would do it. Isolation, heartbreak, a bullet–he would take it, again, if it meant he could have this. Did suffering maximise the reward? It might, he thought, it just might: was it not more jolting, the reality of John in the lab of Bart’s, after Sherlock had fought his brain and neurodivergence and addiction years on his own? Was it not more significant, life-altering, his survival ensured by John in the second night of knowing him, if he had not strained so violently to die in the first place? 

Likewise–did it not become sweeter, now, John’s lips on his, John’s hands on his stomach pushing him gently backwards, because he had lost John in the first place? Would he know to appreciate the singular taste of the corner of John’s mouth, if he had never lost him at all? Would he know to cherish the warmth of John’s palm against his waist, if he had not spent years wishing to touch it?

This was potentially more dangerous and fatal than cocaine.

He wanted every inch of it until it swallowed him whole.

“I’ve got you,” John promised a last time, quietly, intently, as if he were promising something other than this. “I’ve got you–”

And he was. He was.

Touch–desire, love–was a language all on its own. Sherlock was only just beginning to unravel it.

John held him and said, I’ve got you, and Sherlock slung his arms around his neck and pulled him close and said, yes, yes, you do.

You do.


End file.
